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How to configure your printer for quick draft printing

Learn how to configure your printer to print in quick draft mode on a single occasion or permanently by following this brief tutorial.

There are several reasons that lead us to create this post, one of the most important ones is to save us some money. Configure your printer will make you save a lot of money because your printer will use about 30 percent less ink than usual. However, your printing quality will also decrease by the same percentage and your printer will be exposed to the paper jam error more often.

We strongly recommend not doing the configuration in printers working with refilled ink cartridges because those refilled cartridges have the pages yield and the print quality already decreased. You could still choose to print in quick draft mode after refilling your ink cartridges, but you must refill them with the adequate ink type. There is two type of ink, the dye ink, and the pigmented ink, if you want to know the difference between these types of ink, please read our post about it.

Some other features you should consider when setting your printer in the quick draft mode to save ink is to print in Grayscale only. We do recommend using this option on your own printer, but please avoid printing colorful images or documents.
In this post, we will show you two different ways of configuring your printer and setting it in quick draft mode. The first one is meant to teach you how to make it print every single document like this, and the second one will show you how to print individual documents in a quick draft mode without affecting your general printing configurations.

Personally, we recommend you use the second option, since quick draft mode can affect color print quality, and the images and words may not be set on the paper sheet as well as they could.

You should always keep in mind all printers are different, and that this configuration may vary according to the type of printer you are using. This is why we recommend using your printer manual user, where you can get in the original packaging it came with or on the brand’s official website.

Test sheet printing configuration for all documents on a single printer:

Step #1:
Go to the start menu on your computer, the logo will look like this if you are using Windows XP on your computer.

Step #2:
If you’re using Windows XP on your computer, please click on control panel. If, on the other hand, you’re using more modern versions like windows vista or windows7, click on printing devices, located on the right side of the start menu.

Step #3:
Now, locate the printer you’re going to use for this process. The last two steps will take you there and allow you to select the printer you want to use.

Step #4:
Right-click on the printer of your choice

Step #5:
After this has been done, click on printer Preferences, which is usually the third option displayed in this new menu.

Step #6:
If you’re using an HP printer, look for the Paper and Printing Quality option. If you’re using another brand, you may reach this option by browsing the entire menu and looking for a print quality option.

On canon printer, for example, you will need to click on print quality, and then on quick draft. Here’s a picture that will show you how to set the quick draft mode on HP printers.

fast draft printer menu

Step #7:
Now, if you need to print using only the black ink cartridge, don’t forget to click on Color and select the Grayscale option.

final configuration

Step #8:
This will have configured your printer to produce quick drafts only. If you wish to change this in the future, repeat this entire procedure and choose the Normal Printing Quality on the menu instead. If you need help with this procedure, please contact us by leaving a comment in the section below this post, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

How to print a few documents in your printer in quick draft mode:

As mentioned before, you will need to know how to set this printing mode on different occasions and choose which documents you want to save some ink on. Your printer will go back to regular printing mode after you are done printing all the files you chose to have this way.

Step #1:
First, you will need a text processing software, we used Microsoft office, but you can also use open office by Linux the two most-used programs of this sort. Or, you could print a document online.

Step #2:
Once you have click on the print button, the operating system will display a printer configuration window where we can modify certain things, such as how we want this particular document to look.

Step #3:
This window will appears on the screen, you must click on printing preferences. This will take you to another window, which will probably look like this.

assistance for print photos

Step #4:
Finally, click on printing preferences and repeat the former procedure. In this case, we must select the print quality option on our canon printer menu, and then click on quick draft and accept to confirm this procedure.

the location must be selected

Step #5:
Now that these steps have been executed, your printer will reproduce this document and make it look like a quick draft. However, it will not affect future print and isn’t being set as the regular printing mode. If you need any help with this tutorial, please contact us by leaving a comment in the section below.